Paradigms Lost

by Ryk E. Spoor

  The scream in my head was louder, but this time, it was mixed with a wail of despair, confusion and bone-deep sorrow. To my surprise it broke suddenly. I had expected it to continue its assault in desperate denial, hopefully into the trap I’d set. Instead it fled, running from words and thoughts that were too much for it. I gave chase, for this time it hadn’t evaporated into empty gloom, but was fleeing as some sort of almost-defined blackness, flying through the rooms as though searching for something. It screamed as it flew, a keening wail of horror and loneliness and abandonment that kept the gooseflesh crawling on my skin even as I pelted after it in the fastest sprint I could manage.

  It burst out into the night, circling the cabin, flitting from the edge of the little stream to the well to the cabin and . . . no, not screaming, crying. Crying like an abandoned child for a mother that never came, a child in the middle of a dusty, empty house where no voice ever answered back, where no hands came to pick it up and comfort it, no warmth would return to chase away the fear and let it know everything was all right. Nothing would ever be all right, for there was nothing left in the world that cared, nothing that could care, because it had been calling, calling, calling, through ages of mankind, and never had anyone or anything answered.

  I felt tears start from my eyes and I stopped chasing, panting and feeling a stitch in my side. “I’m answering. Stop it.”

  With the sudden volatility of that crying child, it whipped around, lunged at me with a shriek of hatred and denial. A concussion of force threw me backward. I could sense, somehow, the pain inside the creature, the injury it was doing to itself, but it no longer cared. It would kill itself in its effort to silence me, and maybe then the pain would end. Sharp-edged rocks and sticks swirled around me in a bladed hurricane, cutting my hands and jabbing into my body, as I covered my face to keep from losing my eyes. Another silent cry of forceful rage lifted me from the ground, hurled me into the stream, and tried to push my face into the water. I clawed at the insubstantial hands on my neck, but there was nothing to touch, just disembodied force shoving me underwater.

  But for all its ability to produce momentary force, it wasn’t that strong. I got my hands under me and shoved. It hurt my neck, but I was up on all fours, face out of the water, breathing in fast, frightened gasps. It let go, and I staggered to my feet. I sensed more tearing agony, another terrible self-wounding effort, and heard bone-cracking splintery sounds. With real horror, I saw it had broken thick old pine-branches to jagged-ended spears.

  This was officially going too far. Time to call Verne. I reached down and found that my cell phone was dripping water and the screen looked cracked. I tried the phone anyway, dodging the first spear, which embedded itself in the cabin wall. The phone didn’t even power up. I wrenched the cabin door open and lunged inside, the second wooden missile ripping along my side, leaving a ragged, bleeding wound. Well, at least I knew it was mad enough to come after me . . .

  Come after it did, like a screaming typhoon packed into a three-foot sphere of destruction. It was using everything it had to come after me in a truly awe-inspiring tantrum, shredding itself apart like a hurricane coming onto land; it would not survive the experience, but that was no comfort to the poor bastards in its path. It blew the door off its hinges in a shower of splinters, echoing agony from within that was like my own torn side, like ripping out your own heart, but it didn’t seem to care. Maybe, down inside, it had finally come to some dim understanding of what had really happened all those ages ago, and death seemed far the better option.

  I staggered across the living room, diving for the laptop on the far table. Like my phone, it had all the contingencies loaded; I’d just never expected to have to use it this way. The thing flowed across the room, slower now because it was dragging a shard of wood six feet long, but edged like a sword, raising it up to hurl at me with unstoppable strength and undodgeable accuracy in the limited space.

  Now!

  It sensed my shift in mood just one split second too late, as the trap activated. Blazing like the sun in that pitch-black room, an array of emerald lines of pure light leapt into existence, a seven-pointed star that surrounded the creature in an impassable wall of brilliance. The wooden missile dropped harmlessly to the floor. I felt the thing’s influence fade instantly. Potent stuff, that psychological sympathetic magic, especially when the subject was magical.

  It screamed silently in loss and fury, spinning like a trapped whirlwind inside the five-foot space at the center of the seven-sided mystical prison, and then hurled itself at the edges, cutting into itself deeply before retreating. I realized that it would kill itself trying to get to me. I took a deep breath and bellowed, “Hoch’ita!”

  It froze in shock and confusion. Roughly, according to Verne, that word meant “Stop that IMMEDIATELY!” but it carried with it a sense of ancient authority which was never used casually; a King would use it, a general, a powerful wizard, and always it would be an order to be obeyed without question or hesitation. He’d made me practice it for fifteen minutes before he’d been satisfied I’d say it right the first time, and he’d tested me for the next few hours at impromptu moments.

  I’d hoped—at least for the moment, correctly—that the combination of the phrase itself, and the fact that it was certainly the first Atlantaean the thing had heard/sensed in the last half-million years, would make it stop.

  “I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

  It tried to gather itself to scream fear and hate at me again, but then collapsed into itself, aware of its own injuries and, with my honest expression of sympathy and regret, unable to continue its berserk frenzy. It was no longer a towering mass of shadows and terror the height of the ceiling. It was shorter than I was now, coiling and writhing in shuddering pain and sorrow.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have been as hard on you as I was. But I couldn’t be sure—until now—what you were really like. You didn’t really want to hurt anyone, did you?”

  For a moment, it tried to puff itself back up, like a little boy being scolded and trying to pretend that he didn’t care. Then it sagged down, even smaller than before, and I felt a tiny thread of sorrow and repentance.

  “Fear’s just a lot easier to bring out . . . when that’s what’s inside you, isn’t it?”

  It swirled more tightly into a ball, no more than three feet across.

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  Now it raged at me, hammering against the insubstantial walls of light and screaming its self-hatred in crying, hysterical waves of horror and blame that made my eyes sting again with more tears. My God, what this poor thing had gone through. It was a wonder it was even capable of this much communication.

  “No, it wasn’t. The demons sealed off magic, you poor bastard! It cut off your master’s power, turned you into a faint echo of yourself. There wasn’t a damn thing you could have done to help him—or her—and there wasn’t anything they could have done to help you. Your master and partner died . . . and you’ve been stuck here ever since, no magic to release you, because that death happened after magic faded. There was no release, just a binding. You’ve been here, waiting, for half a million years, as the glaciers came down and ran back, as we rose back from barbarism and spread back over the land, waiting and crying for someone to come that could never come back.” I felt the tears that it couldn’t actually cry beginning to break forth from it, into me, heard the edge of a sob in my own voice.

  “But you aren’t alone anymore. You don’t have to die. You don’t have to scare people just to live. There are still things that endure, things that haven’t gone.”

  It moaned, a cry of abandonment and tragedy, unable to believe that anything had lived from its past, when its . . . master? Partner? had gone to nothing. I touched one of the controls, then another. The glowing cage faded out. It glanced around in startlement. I spoke to the air around us. “Come in.”

  Verne Domingo coalesced from the night. The creature shrank back for a moment, but then Verne, who see
med to have instantly understood the situation, simply knelt and held out his arms, saying something low and soft in that ancient language. I heard the words “Eönae” and “thansaelasavi,” and others, in the tone of a father to a frightened child.

  It moved forward, tentatively, radiating disbelief, fear and hope. The undefined monstrous aspect wavered, began to melt away. There was still a shadowy shape, but it neither towered nor threatened. It was exhausted, wounded almost to death by its own efforts, taking hesitant, halting steps forward towards the ancient priest. With a sudden rush, it scuttled into Verne’s arms, curling into a tight little ball and now sobbing audibly with a sound like a crying steamkettle, a solid tiny dragon of polished darkness, wounded in a dozen places and bleeding wisps of shadow. “It’s all right now,” Verne said very quietly. “It will be all right.”

  I sagged back with a sigh of relief, only then realizing that my entire left side was totally soaked in blood and hurt like hell. “I think . . . I’m going to need a little loving care myself,” I said. Then the darkness closed in on me, pushing me down, down . . .

  CHAPTER 84

  Consequences of Hope

  I woke up, staring at pastel walls and hearing all-too-familiar beeping sounds. Glancing over, I saw a very familiar head of night-black hair bent over, sleeping in a nearby chair. “Hey, sweetheart,” I said, feeling only minimal roughness in my throat.

  Syl jolted awake and stood, smiling but with traces of tears in the redness around her eyes. “Hey yourself, Jasie.” She hugged me gingerly; even that stung my side, where I suspected I’d have a hell of a scar. “I thought I told you to be careful!”

  “You said you wanted a husband and a home to come back to. We’re still here.”

  She smiled faintly. “Well, yes, but I was hoping to have them both at the same time.”

  I shrugged, which also hurt. “I’ll admit that I could do without the regular visits to the hospital, but it beats the alternative.” Looking around more carefully, I noticed the room didn’t look quite standard. In fact . . . “Um, where exactly am I?”

  “You are in one room in my home, Jason,” Verne’s deep voice replied. Dressed in his usual immaculate outfit, he had materialized in the doorway. “We have reason—more than ever, in these days—to keep considerable medical equipment on hand, and your wounds, while certainly significant, were easily treatable by someone with general medical knowledge. So I brought you here.”

  “And what about . . .”

  “You were correct, of course, Jason. It was indeed a thansaelasavi, specifically a familiar of a wizard who lived mostly at night and whose magics dealt with light, shadow, darkness, and so on, as well as emotion. I suspect I may have met her—for it was a woman, that much I was able to draw out—once, perhaps at some party or event at the castle. Such wizards were much in demand for such events. Entertainment specialists, you might say.”

  “Where is it?”

  “He, Jason. His name is Arischadel, or Aris for short.”

  “Okay, where is Arischadel?”

  Verne frowned slightly. “Aris is bound where he is. I do not know if I could release him, even if he wanted to be released, but he has spent a near-eternity protecting that spot, as you guessed, like a faithful dog at the grave of his master, perhaps waiting for master to awaken. That has, in turn, bound him ever more tightly to the location. Magic has a way of reinforcing what is being done, of extending and strengthening what already is. He is now more than a familiar spirit, in a way; he is a part of the land in that small area.”

  “Hmm. Is he going to be okay? I mean, I know he put me here, but I was feeling a lot of what the poor thing was feeling. He was scared and angry and not thinking at all. I got the impression of a kid, even if he is as old as you are.”

  “Many thansaelasavi are mentally children. They are not unintelligent, but are relatively simple, not complex beings.” Verne smiled. “Yes, he will be all right. It took much time for me to truly reach him and make him understand, but the strength of Eönae healed and strengthened him. She has accepted his guardianship of that little part of the world, given him a sort of purpose.”

  “But he’s stuck there?” I thought for a moment. “And he’s really lonely. And has been for a really, really long time. I wonder . . .” I had an idea. I asked a few more questions and nodded. First I had to get out of here and talk to Arischadel, but if he was the way I thought . . .

  CHAPTER 85

  Happy Endings

  “You said you’d solved the problem, so why are you coming up here with us?” Dave Plunkett said curiously.

  “Because I said I’d solved the problem, not gotten rid of the cause. I’m going to leave it up to you as to whether you want to deal with what’s left. If not, I’m willing to buy the camp off of you.”

  Dave and the rest of his family glanced apprehensively at me as we continued hiking up the trail towards the cabin. “You mean . . . it is still there?” Lizzie asked nervously.

  “Yes and no,” I answered. “You were right, there was something there, and it scared you, but it wasn’t what it appeared to be.”

  I’d thought for a while about how to approach this. I couldn’t—for a number of reasons—tell them the whole truth, but I also couldn’t just gloss the whole thing over and ignore it. Telling them the truth in general terms would probably be safe, especially if I took certain precautions.

  “Basically, you already knew there are stranger things in the world than we used to believe,” I said. “Werewolves and such. And then you had your own experience. Well, I’m sure you realize that the strange stuff didn’t just come into existence last year. There’s been this kind of thing hidden behind the metaphorical curtains for time out of mind.

  “We don’t know why, but it’s become pretty clear that the weird stuff has become a lot more active lately. Anyway, it turns out that your cabin sits on the same area that someone—call it a wizard—used to live. And when that wizard died, her pet spirit, a ‘familiar,’ you might say, refused to leave. Maybe he didn’t really understand death, or just wasn’t going to leave his master. Anyway, he’s been waiting, and alone, for a really long time, and forgot about working and living with people.”

  “You’re saying it’s been there all along?”

  “Since long before you guys bought the land. Don’t know how long, really. In any case, the thing is that this creature is really mostly spirit. It gets strength from other people living around it, especially from strong emotions directed at it. And in its state, it was easiest to raise the emotion of fear.”

  Dave frowned. “So . . . it was scaring us so that it could eat?”

  “In a way, yeah.” The cabin rose up before us in the sunshine. Chipmunks scattered at our approach, as did a couple of birds. The forest was full of the sound of the native animals getting ready for the fall of night. “And probably, like any kid or animal, acting out of its own fear and territorial protection. The more aware it got, the less it understood of what was going on, and that scared it.”

  Jenny shook her head. “I don’t want to go back in there if it’s going to be playing those games again. Even if it won’t hurt us directly, that’s just too much.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to,” I said.

  “Hey, the door’s trashed!”

  “Sorry. Like I said earlier, it wasn’t an easy job. Worthwhile, but not easy.” I stopped near the entrance. “I said it can get stronger from emotions directed at it. Those emotions don’t have to be—and really shouldn’t be—fear. You don’t think a wizard wants to be afraid of their familiar, do you?

  “Your resident spirit has a name. He’s called Arischadel. I don’t know if it would work for you . . . but what he really needs is people who will enjoy having him around. In return, he can do little things for you.”

  Lizzie looked up suddenly. “Like . . . like the house elves in some stories I read when I was a kid? You’d leave them cookies or something and they’d clean up the house?”

&nb
sp; I laughed. “Something like that, but probably not as immediately useful. I think you kids—and adults—will still have to do the dishes, so to speak. But he’d like to play, I bet.”

  Lizzie shivered suddenly, remembering. “I dunno if I could play with that.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you,” I said, remembering my own unpleasant nights in that cabin. “But what you remember isn’t what he is.”

  “What’s that?” Mitch asked suddenly, pointing.

  I glanced up. “That,” I said, “is Arischadel.”

  Around the corner of the chimney, a little narrow black head was looking, with smoky-crystal eyes. It peered nervously out at the group of us, visible in the darkening twilight because of the faint light in the eyes and a slight luminous edging to the shadowed body. When no one made a move—the Plunketts were all staring—Aris edged hesitantly out from behind the chimney. He was a perfect little dragon, about two feet from nose to tip of tail, glittering crystalline scales making him look like a sculpture in dark quartz, huge eyes blinking uncertainly in what was, to him, the brilliant light, batlike wings twitching with caution.

  It was Lizzie who spoke first. “Oh my God, he’s so cute!” she said.

  Aris gave a questioning burble, a sort of trilling whistle.

  “Are you really the same thing that scared me in my bedroom? You can’t be!” Lizzie started forward.

  Dave stretched out a hand. “Hold on . . .”

  I shook my head. “It’s okay. I guarantee it. She’s doing exactly right. She likes dragons, I take it?”

  Jenny gave a strained laugh. “Her room is almost completely wallpapered with them. When she was a baby, she had a stuffed dragon that went with her everywhere.”